A touching 9-11 memorial

What started as a project to display a 2-by-2-foot piece of twisted steel girder from New York's World Trade Center has turned into a mammoth memorial to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that will weigh more than 10 tons and rise more than 20 feet.

The multi-piece project is so immense that city officials who commissioned it are having trouble finding a place to display it.

"I'm in awe of it even though it is my hands that put it together," said sculptor Felix Gonzalez, 55, a city resident who retired as a captain in the Miami-Dade Fire Department a couple of days before the 9-11 attacks.

He is creating, among other pieces, a giant, hollow steel statue of a firefighter that is 8-foot-6, weighs two tons and looks like bronze.

Gonzalez is so taken with it, he said if Pembroke Pines can't put it "inside where it is safe from vandals and the weather, I'd want it donated to New York City. They have nothing like this. No one does; it doesn't exist."

Mayor Frank Ortis said the city won't give it up.

He said the entire project - the firefighter statue is only one part - will be displayed temporarily under tarps outside City Hall because it is too big to be moved into the lobby's Glass Gallery. If a new city hall is built as planned, Ortis wants the project placed inside on the first floor as part of a city museum.

The firefighter and several other pieces will be dedicated Sept. 11 in a ceremony outside City Hall.

The project began taking shape in 2005 after Commissioner Angelo Castillo asked the city of New York to send the twisted piece of girder. Wanting a fitting display, city commissioners asked the Arts & Culture Advisory Committee to come up with a temporary base. The small base and girder are on display inside the City Commission chamber in City Hall.

For a permanent base, Broward County Commissioner Lois Wexler donated $15,000 from her discretionary fund. Ben Menasche, 71, a Pembroke Pines artist who serves as curator of the city's art facilities, promised to fashion something appropriate.

He recruited Gonzalez, and for the past year and a half, the two have been working inside a unair-conditioned former city fire station at Holly Lake Mobile Home Park on U.S. 27.

Menasche is fashioning a 17,000-pound block of marble, which arrived from Italy in September, into a four-sided tableau. The first side depicts the shock of Sept. 11; the second side the realization of its horrific aftermath; the third side the acceptance; and the fourth side the conclusion that everything will work out.

The actual piece of girder from the World Trade Center will be placed atop the marble at about eye level.

"People will come before this, touch the stone and cry," Menasche said.

Gonzalez has nearly completed the firefighter statue and two 20-foot-high pieces of twisted steel to represent the Twin Towers office complex destroyed that day.

The plan calls for three more statues - a young girl, a police officer and a steelworker - that will take a couple more years to complete. A proposed 40-foot-long, 2-foot-high bench containing the names of 9-11 victims, to be placed along a pond, depends on the uncertain fate of City Center.

Despite the scale of the work, the cost to city taxpayers should be less than $20,000. Gonzalez and Menasche aren't charging for their services. The city allocated $20,000 for machinery and tools, but all will be used later for routine work, such as welding goal posts in city parks. The sheets of steel for the firefighter statue cost about $2,000.

Once in a while, Gonzalez and Menasche stand back and admire their creations.

"People will come from all over to see it," Menasche said. "No one has created anything close to what we are creating."

"We're our biggest fans," Gonzalez admitted.

INFORMATIONAL BOX:

To view more photos of the memorial to the 9-11 victims,

go to Sun-Sentinel.com/statue

Joe Kollin can be reached at jkollin@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7913.